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Microsoft shows off Vail
SOFTWARE COBBLER Microsoft has been demonstrating the uses of its Windows Home Server when connected to something it calls Vail.
The Vail program for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) mobiles adds "My Server" to the phone's dashboard. There are those who are not happy with Windows Home Server because the Vole has dropped its drive extender, however the Windows Phone 7 application Vail might make them think twice.
You can access the alerts on Windows Home Server just as you would from the desktop, as well as try to resolve any problems.
However its best use appears to be to access to your media library. This means that you can stream content from your Windows Home Server to your WP7 phone.
The big idea is that if you are having a chat with your elderly gran and want to show her pictures of your cat, or that nice home you have picked out for her, you can get them at the touch of a button.
It also means that you don't have to carry around the Take That album that you only want to listen to whenever
That can be handy if you want to show off some photos that you haven't stored on your phone or listen to some old music that isn't in your local library.
It also means that you can upload photos from your phone directly to your server as you snap them.
This sort of stuff was seen on the Kin phones, which one one of the better things about those. It is also similar to the My Phone service that Microsoft launched about two years ago for Windows Mobile 6.x devices.
My Phone backed up all of the above in addition to documents. It also had location services built in that would allow you to find your phone if you lost it.
What is strange is that was the sort of technology that the Vole dropped when Windows Phone 7 was released. It looks like Microsoft will be slowly adding back some of those features in the coming months, trying to get back to where it was around two years ago. µ
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Only 2 things come up my mind,
A) Data Charge:
Surly it will boost up the bill on the data charge...
B) Security Breach:
Now you can show to whomever tagged along your connection that your sensitive/confidential files on your server(s)...
Didn't it just sound great?
Windows-kernelled phone?! Frank, you're the living proof that marketing works (maybe the missing link connecting us to monkeys too - nurse: scalpel!).
If you have a QNAP NAS running firmware version 3.3.0+, does pretty much the same thing, for Iphone or Android.
Vail is the code name for Windows Home Server 2.
Is Microsoft worried that WP7 may lag behind other Microsoft OS's (or competitors phone OS's) in terms of virus load?
The one sure way to infect your Windows-kernelled phone is to connect it to an infected Windows box. I imagine WHS boxes are very popular with botnet operators, being left on all the time and connected to the Internet and all.
$100K in 1-900 number charges anyone?
You would think "Vail" would be uncomfortably close to FAIL, linguistically-speaking.
It is interesting that Microsoft seems to set itself up for failure, now reloading the failed components of its KIN-phone disaster into the renamed "Win phone 7" products and expecting things to sell (while the phones bankrupt their few owners by maxing out their data plans while not being used).
Similar apparent self-extinction effects are seen elsewhere in nature when a species population becomes too large. For example, overpopulated VOLES are often decimated by disease. So perhaps these Microsoft-Voles have acquired some form of mental disease which is causing them to spend billions on inane marketing of substandard, poorly-designed, insecure products which fail?
Microsoft really needs to make all their products work nicely together. I would have preferred a media center media extender app for phone 7 (unless I misunderstood the article).
Now if only microsoft would make a windows media extender app for windows 7...
Which is why we'll market it as New Slurm and then when everyone hates it, we will bring back Slurm Classic and make billions!!!